IF there’s anyone more intense than a teenage daughter determined to right the world’s wrongs and defeat exploitation at a stroke, I have yet to meet her. Such young ladies can be terrifying.

Misplaced vanity had led me to the summer clothes section of a large city centre store where design and colour hold no bars, not even for the expanding male waist. (Should I risk the derision of grandsons by turning out in shorts depicting scantily clad windsurfers?) Making her feelings heard from a couple of racks away was Evangeline – not her real name but somehow appropriate.

On Bank Holiday Monday she and her mother were piecing together a ‘wardrobe’ for an extended holiday in the sun the girl would make with family friends. Each selection was met with disapproval – from Evangeline.

Her objections were to the price – they were much too cheap. The word ‘exploitation’ figured loud and often as garments were rejected. Facts and figures were trotted out to prick the consciences of all who might listen.

“Why must we shop here?” asked the girl. Mother’s reply was swift and to the point.

“Because it’s all your dad and I can afford,” she said. “Perhaps you’d prefer to go in your school uniform – or stay at home?”

I didn’t stick around for the outcome. Those garish shorts had to be returned to the rack.

MEANWHILE, Jonty hammered his keyboard outside Boots in Cornmarket Street. His friend Charlie sang. What the tunes and words were I can’t report; the noise around was overpowering.

“We really needed an amplifier or something,” explained Charlie, a 15-year-old Magdalen School pupil. His classmate Jonty agreed. But they soldiered on.

The public was cautiously generous. I was happy to contribute if only for their determination and impeccable good manners.

THE couple from Derby peered into the entrance where the gates to the threatened Covered Market were chained and barred.

“Why isn’t the market open today?” the woman asked disappointedly. An elegant elderly man, with an equally elegant woman on his arm, walked by.

“Why indeed?” he said, waving regally but not stopping to offer any explanation.

OUR Highways Department was out in force in the city centre, using its impressive mechanical pavement scourer. Heading home along Cowley Road by way of a change, I spotted a lone shopkeeper clearing her doorway using a bucket of water and a brush. She swept the sizeable pile of litter into her neighbour’s pavement space, making no attempt during my five-minute observation to use the council bin standing a couple of yards away. Ah well...